New Thief based on Unreal engine 3; Next-gen console SKUs will look "almost" identical to PC

Square Enix’s Thief is not being built using the much-touted Unreal Engine 4.

UE4 has been used very much as the poster child of next-gen consoles, but sadly production on the stealth game began before UE4 became available.

And with a release not currently scheduled on current-gen consoles, it’s fair to argue that Thief may not be able to compete with other next-gen launch titles in terms of graphical clout.

(Although that won’t matter at all if it’s a brilliant game, of course.)

"Keep in mind when we started, Unreal 4 was [still in] development," Thief producer Stephane Roy VideoGamer. "Something really important for us is the flexibility to modify the tools, for example, and Unreal is flexible on this side.

"We worked a lot to improve the tools for the artists and the designers. The game is big, we have to produce a lot of assets. Light and shadow gameplay is amazingly important on our side so we worked very hard to boost the rendering aspect of the engine, how to deal with the light.

“So I think it's a question of flexibility. With Unreal it's possible to do it. So yes, it's Unreal 3, but [there are] some modifications."

It is also claimed that the console versions will look “almost identical” to the PC SKU.

Only almost? Although it is of little interest to console gamers, the PC gaming fraternity are very keen to see how next-gen releases stack up compared to today’s high-power gaming PCs. And of course, with AMD’s new 8000 series cards and Nvidia’s GTX 700 on the way, PCs may have surpassed the next-gen consoles before they’re even on the shelves.

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